Update Kills 8.1 (times 2)

About 2 weeks ago I noticed that every time I lost wifi connection, which with my ISP that's been a good bit, in order to get my wifi working again I had to restart the computer and then go in and re-enable the adapter then manually tell it to connect to an automatic connection. After a week or so, I remembered that there had been a windows update just before this started.

So I downloaded the newest network driver for my pc, unfortunately that didn't help. Then a few days after that, which was late last night, I went to get on the pc, and I could not click on anything, the cursor would move, but not click with a usb mouse. So I turned the touchpad on and tried it, it would click whatever, but would not move the cursor. So using both the mouse and pad, I was trying to get here to ask about this, and then everything stopped working. There was no internet, no usb, no touchpad nothing.

So I get my wife's laptop, don't remember exactly what model #, but I started it up, and as I opened Chrome, I get a pop-up about a Windows update, I didn't think about it, I just clicked "Update". So I get signed in here, and start typing and get a notification that the updated was complete, and it needed to restart. I clicked restart by accident. When it got rebooted, and everything loaded, I noticed there was no internet, so I was going to check on it, but guess what, the mouse and touchpad both were doing what mine had done. I was going to try and uninstall that update, but before I got there it quit responding. It's also now a paperweight, just like mine.

I tried to use my factory restore media to do a startup repair, wouldn't work, I then tried to use a system restore, since I do make sure I have backups and restore points. But when I got to the restore section of the restoration media,, and clicked "use system restore", it pulled up a restore point, from the update, I clicked "use different date", but it did not respond, it just sat there. I clicked the point that it was showing, again no response.

So I get on windows support chat, and they convince me that a refresh will work. So I try to refresh each one, both failed with no error, just "Could not complete refresh". So I try to do another system restore, and again both fail with no error. So what now? What can I try?

It's a pain but at this point it might be your only option.
It's generally non-destructive, so assuming that nothing you've done up to now has resulted in anything more problematic then what you've described above, then all your drivers, programs and such should remain unharmed, it just takes a while, usually longer than a normal install and it's, as always a good idea to have a current, known good system image just in case.
You'll have to catch up all your "Windows Updates" again so I would strongly suggest you take steps to perform them, one at a time and make sure that no hardware updates are installed "ever", by Windows Updates.
Hardware updates should always come directly from the hardware device manufacturer or in your case from the laptop manufacturer.

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Thank You Trouble, i am going to try that right now. But two more question, I have the install disk loaded, and chose the recovery option, however I can not click on any of the options. I can move the cursor with the mouse or touchpad, but neither will click anything. Any idea what i might do there?

Also, several months ago I used the Windows Recovery Wizard thingy, to create a Recovery Drive, (it's a small drive less than a gig), but I did try to use it a couple months later when I installled and uninstalled the wrong program and it messed me up, but I got an error msg that Windows could not use the drive, it was in the wrong format(?) or something, any idea on that? The system restore worked then, but did not do some settings correctly and I wanted to fix it with that recovery drive, it wasn't that important at the time, and I planned on asking what to do, but never got around to it, (I always regret not getting to something like that LOL).

You'll likely need to learn to navigate around using the keyboard.
Tab, arrows, spacebar, and enter key.
You need to start your system, insert the installation media and run the setup.exe program to perform an inplace upgrade /repair.
It's not actually a recovery option, it's an option you have during the setup process to "upgrade".

You'll likely need to learn to navigate around using the keyboard.
Tab, arrows, spacebar, and enter key.
You need to start your system, insert the installation media and run the setup.exe program to perform an inplace upgrade /repair.
It's not actually a recovery option, it's an option you have during the setup process to "upgrade".

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply.

I forgot to say, I have been moving the cursor with the mouse, and having to click with the touchpad. The mouse wouldn't click, and the touchpad wouldn't move the cursor. I have been using the arrow keys etc... as much as possible. But, I booted into windows, and inserted the install disk, but no auto play. I could not get auto play to work for anything, I have both the DVD and a USB drive as install media, and neither would activate auto play. So using the arrow keys, I opened the control panel, and selected auto play and hit enter, when I tried to scroll down to software media, I moved the highlight box down two places, at that point it moved over to a selection drop-down, and I could cycle through those options, but could not get out of there at all. No way to move down. So I said, when I move a device to a different usb port it has to reload the driver, don't know why but it does. So I moved my mouse to a different port, and it did reload the driver, sort of, the progress icon showed up on the task bar, the green went all the way across, and it went away. But, no notification that the driver installed correctly, and it still won't click anything.

Then I thought I remembered seeing an upgrade option during the install process, so I rebooted to the install media, I was able to arrow and enter through the screens until I hit the accept terms and conditions, but no way of clicking the check-mark box. Without a check-mark can't go any farther. Now I'm really lost. I've ran into a lot of situations over the years, and have always been able to come up with a crazy idea that worked. But, I don't know how to install a usb mouse, or touchpad driver to the BIOS, or the POST, or even the installation disk, or wherever it needs to go. I do have a driver disk that came with my pc, but again no auto play, oh yeah almost forgot, when I go into This PC, and arrow down and highlight the DVD drive, I can't click on it, and enter does not work either, so no way of starting the autorun.exe, or similar file.

Like I said I've fixed some crazy stuff, but I'm at a loss here, being unable to start the install disk. So any idea's how to get around this one? I know you know more than I do, and I do appreciate you sharing that knowledge.

to activate a check box without a mouse, generally involves tabbing to it so it is active and then tapping the space bar, BUT.....
Once again you need to run the setup.exe from within Windows to get the proper upgrade option.
Selecting that check box when booting from the installation media will only produce a message that you need to start the OS in order to upgrade.

You can simply type D:\setup.exe (assuming D:\ is your drive containing the installation media). You don't need autorun to work.
you should be able to type that from just about anywhere within Windows 8 or 8.1.
Search, a command prompt, from within file explorer, etc.,

Ok, thanks, I'll do that, and let you know. A lot of this I should already know, I've done a lot of it in Windows, but in my current mental condition, being frustrated over this, I just can't think. Most of what your telling me though, is new information. But, I prefer to use Linux, and just use Windows for those special programs, so I should be used to the command line LOL, but I forget it's available in Windows.

Hopefully you'll be successful in getting this problem repaired.
When that happens, before you do anything else.
Open your advanced system settings and tell Windows Updates to not install hardware drivers.

If you find that you need device drivers afterwards, then use the Laptop Manufacturer's site first and attempt to secure the drivers from there.

Thank You so much. I had to run a system restore 4 times, every time it did a little more, but overall it failed to finish. After the forth time it finally finished, and now it's working right. I do have update set so it doesn't auto update the drivers.

I don't know what that update did to both my 8.1 pc's, but it screwed them up bad, especially mine. I've seen updates mess up a computer, but it's usually one device, how this one messed up the entire pc, I just wish I knew what it was.

Hi guys, long time no speak.
Thought I'd piggyback on this thread and ask, is my W 8.1 borked after updating and 14 hours of spinning circle and "please wait".
Was working great for years, and got a bunch of updates because this is the one machine I'd like to upgrade to 10 the most, and after restart, 14 hours of nothing.
Here's my real question: I have my original W8 iso install disk and was wondering if if I could do a repair install with that or do I need an 8.1 iso (if there is such a thing) to try and save this install?

I'd like to thank MS for trying something completely different and effing it up! (sarcasm)

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